10Jun 2014 by Grant Fritchey 3 Comments

Differences In Native Compiled Procedures Execution Plans

Uncategorized
All the wonderful functionality that in-memory tables and natively compiled procedures provide in SQL Server 2014 is pretty cool. But, changes to core of the engine results in changes in things that we may have developed a level of comfort with. In my post last week I pointed out that you can't see an actual execution plan for natively compiled procedures. There are more changes than just the type of execution plan available. There are also changes to the information available within the plans themselves. For example, I have a couple of stored procedures, one running in AdventureWorks2012 and one in an in-memory enabled database with a few copies of AdventureWorks tables: --natively compiled CREATE PROC dbo.AddressDetails @City NVARCHAR(30) WITH NATIVE_COMPILATION, SCHEMABINDING, EXECUTE AS OWNER AS BEGIN ATOMIC WITH (TRANSACTION ISOLATION LEVEL…
Read More
06Jun 2014 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

Speaker of the Month, June 2014

Professional Development
It's not like I can't find plenty of great presentations here in the US, but, while I was over in Belgium at Techorama I checked out several of the presenters there. They were awesome. This was the first ever Techorama. It's a developer focused event, but there was stuff there for data-centric people too. They had a great international collection of speakers from all over. The venue was a movie theater which was a lot of fun to present in, although may be a little too comfy to watch presentations (I fell asleep in one, I sure hope I didn't snore). It was such a great event that I decided to pick my speaker of the month from there. I saw a bunch of very good presentations (even the one…
Read More
05Jun 2014 by Grant Fritchey 2 Comments

Natively Compiled Procedures and Execution Plans

T-SQL
The combination of in-memory tables and natively compiled procedures in SQL Server 2014 makes for some seriously screaming fast performance. Add in all the cool functionality around optimistic locking, hash indexes and all the rest, and we're talking about a fundamental shift in behavior. But... Ah, you knew that was coming. But, you can still write bad T-SQL or your statistics can get out of date or you can choose the wrong index, or any of the other standard problems that come up that can negatively impact all those lovely performance enhancements. Then what? Well, same as before, take a look at the execution plan to understand how the optimizer has resolved your queries. But... Yeah, another one. But, things are a little different with the natively compiled procedures and…
Read More
13May 2014 by Grant Fritchey 8 Comments

Add an Instance to SQL Server Azure Virtual Machine

Azure, SQL Server
How do you add an instance to your local SQL Server installation? You run the executable that you probably downloaded from MSDN or maybe from a CD. Works the same on an Azure VM right? Sure... but wait. Do I have to go and download the software to my VM instance? Let's assume that you're running one of the VMs from the Gallery, then, the answer is "No." Just navigate to C:\SQLServer_12.0_Full. There you'll find the full installation setup for SQL Server. And you're off and running... Until you realize that you don't have the Product Key for this thing. What happens when you get to this screen: You can look around all you want and you won't see a product key anywhere. At least no where that I could…
Read More
09May 2014 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

Carolina Cruise

Misc
I'm going to speak at three user groups in three days in North and South Carolina. Evidently this is known as the Carolina Cruise.  Here are all the details. And yeah, that's me and a bunch of Scouts down in the Florida Keys at Seabase. I'm really looking forward to this event. If you're in the area, let's get together and talk.
Read More
02May 2014 by Grant Fritchey 8 Comments

Speaker of the Month, May 2014

Professional Development
Whoa! Another month gone by already? I guess I better pick a speaker of the month then. I went to several events this month, so selection was difficult, getting to see so many great speakers. But, one stood out in my mind, partly because he's the least experienced speaker I've seen in quite a while. But his inexperience didn't show. Speaker of the Month for May 2014 is Andy Yun (t) and his presentation Every Byte Counts. The session was about using the right data types. You'd think this is self-obvious, but from the way Andy packed the room along with the attention and questions from the attendees, it's clearly a topic that needed attention. I really liked how he did a presentation on the problem space before showing his goals…
Read More
23Apr 2014 by Grant Fritchey 2 Comments

Azure Automation

Azure
I introduced Azure Automation in a previous post. I've spent some more time exploring it. There's a set of documentation available as I noted before. Unfortunately, reading through the full set of documentation, I have some criticisms to offer. The layout of the documentation goes through "Common runbook tasks" actually more or less laying things out as I did, inadvertently, I assure you, in my previous blog post. The problem with that, as I found in that post is, the administration of the runbooks seems fairly straightforward from the screens. But, you can't do a darned thing with any of it until you have a runbook . Further, you can't have a runbook until that thing has some code in it. And, the documentation doesn't include documentation about code. Instead,…
Read More
22Apr 2014 by Grant Fritchey 22 Comments

I Am Better Than You

DevOps
That is a patently false statement and total BS. It sure does crawl up your spine though doesn't it? Why then do we need to do this? I read an article, "How DevOps is Killing the Developer," and, frankly, was a little put off by this: Good developers are smart people. I know I'm going to get a ton of hate mail, but there is a hierarchy of usefulness of technology roles in an organization. Developer is at the top, followed by sysadmin and DBA. QA teams, "operations" people, release coordinators and the like are at the bottom of the totem pole. Why is it arranged like this? Because each role can do the job of all roles below it if necessary. Nice to know I'm almost as good as…
Read More
16Apr 2014 by Grant Fritchey 2 Comments

Microsoft Azure Automation

Azure
Microsoft just announced a new mechanism for managing your Azure resources, Automation. You can check out the documentation on it here. It's a mechanism to create runbooks using PowerShell that you can then combine with other runbooks inside a runbook, etc. Let's check it out. I'm doing everything you see here without consulting the documentation. I want to see how easy it is to put this stuff together. First, because it's still in preview, you have to sign up. Once you're accepted in the program, you get a new icon in your Management Portal. Next, you'll have to create an automation account. That's pretty straight forward. It's just a name, your selected region and the subscription you're putting it under. No immediate guidance on where, when or if the region matters that…
Read More
15Apr 2014 by Grant Fritchey 11 Comments

SQL Server First Aid

DevOps, Professional Development
If you take basic first aid, say a CPR course, you'll learn a handy mnemonic for the primary assessment you have to make, A-B-C. That breaks down as Airway, Breathing, Circulation. Is there an open airway so they can breathe? Are they breathing? Do they have circulation, a pulse, are they alive in short. I recently took a two day course on wilderness first aid (on top of CPR training and first responder training and basic and advanced first aid training and Scout training and Scout first-aid training and I'm sure I'm forgetting some) that added to that, D-E. We now have Disability and Environment. In short, just how responsive is the person or do they have the possibility of spinal issues? What's the environmental situation, lieing on cold ground,…
Read More